All My Love - Comments

@ isak valtersen

I love this, mostly for giving me constructive criticism. This is one of my older stories, and I hoped I've learned from my mistakes and write more grammatically better now. I'm still a little bit rusty, from years of neglect, but I want to start writing again. Your comments have been the most wonderful thing, and I'm glad it's the first thing I've seen today.

I don’t actually read Supernatural fanfic, but I used to watch the show for the first five seasons so I like to think I have a good grasp on Dean’s character—which I think you definitely captured in his dialogue and narrations throughout the entire piece. His frustration with Lola and that whole ‘tortured bad boy’ thing he does even though he’s probably one of the biggest softies in the Supernatural universe. He’s so damn sweet and such a pushover for his loved ones, and literally everyone knows it so even Lola is like Dean pls I see through your tormented act. I actually loved the entire scene because you created this really loving but frustrating dynamic between the two. You could just tell that Lola is the one that’ll ground Dean when he needs it the most, especially in his crazy world.

Not gonna lie though, I totally laughed when Lola pulled “what if they come for me and you’re not here” card. I really enjoyed the ambiguous ending, though. I feel like it’s very in character for Dean to not be able to make a choice because he has this obligation to save the world but he also just wants to settle down like a normal person. There’s no permanent resolve to their conflict by the end, which I really appreciated. I kind of didn’t want a solid answer, honestly. (Though, I kind of don’t feel like Dean stayed. If I really think about it, I lean more towards the ending where he left anyway because that feels more Dean-esque to me.)

I do think there were some places where it seemed kind of choppy, so it made it hard to find a steady flow in your descriptions. Most of the stiffness in your prose stemmed from some grammatical errors. Like bellamy blake said, some of your dialogue tags aren’t proper. You use a comma where you should use a period and vice versa, and sometimes the capitalization is wrong.

I really enjoyed this overall though, it was great!

Okay, time for first impressions! First off, I really like the subtle tones of gray you used in the layout, especially the way you incorporated that pop of pink in the banner, the summary, and the links, It gave me the impression that this oneshot wasn’t going to be completely doom and gloom. Normally, I can’t stand it when people use a ton of different graphics in their layouts because I find it incredibly distracting for me as a reader, but I didn’t have as much of an issue with this layout because all of the patterns were in the same color family. I do have to admit that I thought the summary was a bit too big and too bright, especially when paired with that rather large divider. Overall, I was really excited to read this because, aside from the summary being intriguing, I’m a total Dean girl

Moving on to the actual content of the story, I really enjoyed how this piece started out at an obviously pivotal moment in the couple’s relationship. I didn’t have to hunt around or make any assumptions as to what was at stake for the characters because it was right there from the get-go, and I admire that. I also really adored how you sort of reflected the struggles in the relationship with the characters’ personal internal conflict. I also really felt like the dialogue throughout this piece read very realistically. I could imagine that these are the things that two people in this situation would say to one another, and I really admired how you made the argument between them feel real. There was never a moment where I thought any of the dialogue came across as being too cheesy or too stereotypical. Another aspect of this piece that I enjoyed was the way that you kept the ending relatively open. There wasn’t a true resolution in their conflict and the pull between Dean’s “professional” life and his personal life, and I got the impression that, although this was something Dean had to do, the two of them would always be a big part of one another’s life.

Moving onto the constructive criticism, though I did like getting a bit of both Lola and Dean’s perspective, I feel that the main thing that kind of prevented me from becoming completely immersed in this piece was how disjointed it was. In the beginning, you start out primarily from Lola’s perspective, but as the story progressed, there was a perceivable shift towards Dean’s perspective, and I feel like it would’ve been easier to follow as a reader if you stuck with one primary focus. I also wish that there would’ve been more background information about the two of them as a couple. You establish that they’ve been in and out of each other’s lives for years, but I feel like, in order for me to become invested in their relationship as a reader, I need to know more about their past together, like how they met, what drew them to one another, all that good stuff. I also noticed quite a few of the same grammatical errors, and while I normally wouldn’t point it out and go over specifics since this isn’t an editing comment, since I’m mostly seeing the same mistake, I’m going to do so.

“If I don’t save these people, who will?” He asked, turning back to face her and pulling her in closer to him. In this sentence, “he” should not be capitalized. In dialogue, things such as “he asked,” “she said,” etc are phrases of attribution. They are part of the same sentence as the dialogue being spoken, and since it’s not the beginning of a new sentence, it shouldn’t be capitalized.

“You heard me, Dean Winchester,” She furrowed her eyebrows and deepened her frown and he watched as she put a hand on her hip. – Similarly, in this line, there should not be a comma at the end of the dialogue. “She furrowed her eyebrows…” isn’t an attributional phrase, it’s an action, so while in this case, “she” is properly capitalized, the dialogue itself is a separate sentence, so you need a period instead of a comma there.

Overall, I really enjoying reading this piece